Why I Hope We Can All Be Poor Farmers in 2017

What a children's story taught me about resourcefulness

I wish you happiness born from true and meaningful interactions, intimate friendships, and love.

May this happiness wend its way to you like a warming river of light, as you in turn find your way to it.

I hope satisfaction and pleasure come as sparks created by meaningful work, knowledge well applied, clear thought, courageous action, and expanding intuition.

I hope (at the risk of sounding like a 1970s beauty pageant contestant!) for a more tolerant world, not artificially buoyed by the sugary highs of collective superiority or perceived triumphs over others.

And in some mysterious way, perhaps my happiness and yours may be invisibly linked.

37 trillion cells go to make up one human body, and, currently, 7.5 billion selves go to make up our one world. ‘I’ should never trump ‘we’.

People matter because we are the matter that can actually affect change in the world. As Joni Mitchell sang, “We are stardust.” But we are stardust with eyes and ears. We are individuals but also societies. Maybe, in one way, we are the centre of the Universe. We are the architects of our own happiness.

Collective happiness is an ocean made up of billions of drops of personal happiness. But as we pass through the gateway to the new year, one thing really strikes me about our world.

We don’t use enough of what we have.

When I was a child, all that time ago, like many kids, I loved and craved stories. To me, stories were (and still are) timeless echoes of the essence of life itself. Like whispers from some collective soul that gently entreats us to “Wake up!”

One story always stood out to me.

Don’t ever be tyrannized

My favourite picture book was The Poor Farmer and the Robber Knights. In fact, the message of that book has powered much of my life.

Walter Kreye’s masterpiece (well, it is to me!) is a simple tale of an impoverished, hardworking farmer who is bullied and abused by a band of thieving, entitled knights.

Don’t you hate it when that happens? And make no mistake, it does happen.

Anyway, they continually leech off our poor farmer. I was especially incensed when I learned they steal his strawberries (strawberries, I tell you!) along with his other hard-earned crops. The injustice of it! His powerlessness in the face of such oppression!

Mind you, it’s not long before our farmer reaches the end of his tether. I liked that about him. But arriving at the end of your tether is no good if you don’t have a plan.

He has no weapons, no armour, no allies brave enough to help him drive these wicked interlopers from his land (think a rustic High Noon).

What can he do?

Lay down and die? Oh no, not I!

He can do plenty.

He thinks on what he does have. And he uses it.

He uses a saucepan for a helmet. He uses a colander to protect his face (come on, I was four!). He uses iron farm implements to protect his legs and body. He uses a plough and pitchfork as weapons. And he rides an old donkey in place of a steed.

He makes himself fit for purpose using what he can find. Because that’s all he has. But he never overlooks what he has.

And you know what?

He does it. He drives the invaders from his land. He transforms himself through what he does have but also what he doesn’t.

Indeed, it’s so often our deficits that, paradoxically, empower us to gain.

And even as a four year old I knew something about that poor farmer.

He wasn’t poor at all.

He was much richer than those prideful, conceited, heedless bureaucrats… I mean, knights!

You see, he had what it took all along. And he used it. If we look beyond the surface, we’ll find out something incredibly important about ourselves.

Because we all have the knowledge and the means to get what we want. The question is whether, like the farmer, we have the courage to use it.

Are we constantly wanting more and more and more without even stopping to use what we already have?

And who or what are the knights?

The culture around us that tells us we can’t? Self-bullying? Undermining doubts? Depressive thinking?

To this day, when I see someone beat depression I am reminded of The Poor Farmer and the Robber Knights. The great tyrannical interloper has been defeated by the formerly downtrodden one. Resources have been mobilized and strengthened.

So what is the source of this farmer’s wealth?

Resourcefulness, enterprise, calm foresight and, most of all, the courage to act on what he knew and use what he did have. He could never be poor. Not really.

He is you and me. We are him.

So as I wish you happiness in this new year, I hope you’ll use all you have, because you have more than you know. But not, I hope, more than you’ll ever know.

What are you looking forward to accomplishing in 2017? Tell us in the comments below!